Israelis join group of observers to monitor Uzbekistan election

Eduard Yakubov, the president of the Holon Institute of Technology, was among a group of some 400 international observers in Uzbekistan on Sunday monitoring elections to choose its second-ever leader. Of those observers, he was probably the only one who also visited the graves of his parents, grandparents and some 40 relatives.

Yakubov immigrated to Israel with his family from Tashkent in 1990 as the Soviet Union fell apart and – in his words – Uzbekistan was on the verge of collapse. On Thursday, he arrived back in the country as a member of a six-person Israeli delegation to oversee elections in a country that was ruled by the autocratic Islam Karimov until his death in September 2015.